7 ms·

I'm reminded of the Pepsi gravitational field: https://people.mozilla.org/~faaborg/files/20090521-firefoxIconQA/pepsi_gravitational_field.pdf https://people.mo

by nilkn 11y ago

I'm reminded of the Pepsi gravitational field: https://people.mozilla.org/~faaborg/files/20090521-firefoxIconQA/pepsi_gravitational_field.pdf https://people.mozilla.org/~faaborg/files/20090521-firefoxIc... (Page 26)

davidw 11y ago
Wow, that is epic. I'm not sure what the hell to make of it, but it kind of reads like one of those net.kook manifestos about how to create a perpetual motion machine or something like that. But more polished.
- randycupertino 11y ago
  It reminds me of something food startup Hampton Creek did when VCs and reporters came to visit- they would have their scientists fire up dry ice machines and do fake "cool looking experiments" for no purpose other than to look impressive: > When investors, clients, or media visited the company, some scientists would be asked to run experiments on cool-looking machines or use liquid nitrogen to dramatic effect — even if it had nothing to do with their work, a former employee says. > It was all to create an appearance of a hardworking lab, even though it distracted from the actual research that needed to be done, former employees said. http://www.businessinsider.com/hampton-creek-ceo-complaints-2015-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/hampton-creek-ceo-complaints-...
  - J-dawg 11y ago
    Ugh, that article is so sad. I really wanted to believe the hype about Hampton Creek. It seemed like they were doing something truly revolutionary with the potential to drastically reduce human consumption of eggs. (This can only be a good thing for anyone with a concern for animal welfare.) The article suggests their core product is just mayonnaise made with an already-commonplace vegan food additive. They outsourced the development of it, and don't even understand the science of how it works. Is there a new generation of entrepreneurs who have realised their path to riches is to found a PR machine masquerading as a tech company?
    - manigandham 11y ago
      > Is there a new generation of entrepreneurs who have realised their path to riches is to found a PR machine masquerading as a tech company? ...Yes. I wouldnt call it "new" or a "generation" but rather there are always those who can get by with hype and no substance. Nothing new but the amount of people doing it goes through boom and bust cycles like everything else.
sciguy77 11y ago
This can't be real... right? God the advertising industry is so much worse than I thought.
- samstave 11y ago
  Seriously... is this a real design document?
  - sciguy77 11y ago
    I did a quick google and it appears so. :/
    - ryan-allen 11y ago
      I think you'll find that the NeXT logo was designed in a similar fashion, and that many high end brands get this kind of input into their logos and branding. Call it snake oil? Probably, but at least a multi billion dollar brand can answer the question "Why does the swirl look like that?". And only $1 million? That was _cheap_!
      - samstave 11y ago
        Just give me the multi-million dollar logo contract so I may give you the snake-oil design document which justifies my multi-million dollar fee for the snake-oil design document!
- zanny 11y ago
  I guess its hard to deal with that, at the end of the day, you are just trying to exploit subconscious survival instincts to usurp the rational mind to get people buy things they do not want to buy.
- timdeneau 11y ago
  It must be satire… but even the chance that it’s real is disturbing.
- 11y ago
waterlesscloud 11y ago
Wow. I'd loved to have seen this presentation, and in particular a recording of the Pepsi exec's faces as they decide it's safer to go with the consensus of the group rather than to speak up.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  This is basically the modern version of The Emperor's New Clothes.
bduerst 11y ago
Hah, that's pretty mild compared to some of the things I've seen come back from creative agencies. Sometimes the agencies throw these dud concepts in there to push you to select one of the better concepts they spent more time on. Which makes you wonder what the other concepts were that didn't make it for the new Uber icon.
- username223 11y ago
  It's past time to stop calling them "creative agencies." They're "advertisers," "hucksters," or "paid liars," and asking us to call them "creative" was pretty creative.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    Even if I had said "Hucksters" then you would have most likely thought of something other than a creative agency. I could probably shave with the amount of edge you've got there.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    To be honest, lying on that level advertisers do requires quite a lot of creativity sometimes. So does placating conscience.
vidanay 11y ago
That made my brain hurt.
jrochkind1 11y ago
Oh man, I've never seen that before. I think the folks at that agency were DEFINITELY high when they came up with that report. bduerst says it's typical. Are marketting professionals all high?
- shermablanca 11y ago
  Except that it wasn't an agency at all. Kalanick headed the redesign himself, despite admitting that he didn't even know what kearning was when he started. From wired: >>> Most CEOs hire experts—branding agencies that specialize in translating corporate values into fonts and colors—or tap an in-house team. Not Kalanick. For the past three years, he’s worked alongside Uber design director Shalin Amin and a dozen or so others, hammering out ideas from a stuffy space they call the War Room. Along the way, he studied up on concepts ranging from kerning to color palettes. “I didn’t know any of this stuff,” says Kalanick. “I just knew it was important, and so I wanted it to be good.” http://www.wired.com/2016/02/the-inside-story-behind-ubers-colorful-redesign/ http://www.wired.com/2016/02/the-inside-story-behind-ubers-c...
  - outside1234 11y ago
    tl;dr Kalanick jumps the shark.
  - kzhahou 11y ago
    Self-jumping shark
  - username223 11y ago
    > “I didn’t know any of this stuff,” says Kalanick. “I just knew it was important, and so I wanted it to be good.” Translation: "I don't know anything about this, but I believe it is important, so I want it to be done right... and I somehow think I am the person to do that." This is why we all repair our own cars using hammers and pliers.
  - jrochkind1 11y ago
    I was referring the pepsi one in the comment I was replying to!
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
archimedespi 11y ago
It's like corporate timecube :) But in all seriousness, how do people even get away with shit like this?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  This is absolutely a higher level of nonsense, but I've seen quite a lot of bullshit people are getting away with in web / social marketing. Basically, nobody in a "creative" agency has any fucking clue how statistics work, so they fudge some numbers and invent interpretations. Customers don't have a clue either, but they're compelled to believe because they spent money on it, and since actual sales data are hard to correlate with particular actions, the agency can extract money from their client as long as the client isn't doing too badly. It reminds me of an article posted here a month ago[0]. Some juicy quotes: [1]. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10872359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10872359 [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10873226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10873226
  - mercer 11y ago
    Similarly, I have rarely met an SEO or social media expert who wasn't full of shit, and I have to deal with these people on a regular basis. I've read reports with analyses that were blatantly wrong from a statistic or technical perspective, I've had discussions about the value of 'meta keywords' and whatnot where google itself refuted their arguments. And the most 'effective' experts I found were only so because they'd do all sorts of shady things like set up blogs for link juice. On the other hand, I have met plenty of people with deep knowledge of SEO and social media, but very few of them called themselves primarily experts in this area. Usually they'd be web developers/designers, or small creative studios, or just have some unsexy job description working for a big company.
Elepsis 11y ago
I don't frequently wish the loss of a job upon other people, but I dearly hope everyone involved in producing that document was fired for it, because there is not an iota of substance in those pages.
- duskwuff 11y ago
  One iota, possibly. The "color theory" section on page 25 is actually halfway reasonable. (I like to imagine the employee working on that part was rolling their eyes wildly at the insanity going on around them.)
  - stordoff 11y ago
    I was half-expecting to find something along the lines of "Ignore this /\ (also this \/)" somewhere on that page, as it's the only thing I saw in the whole document that didn't look like it fell out of some broken Markov chain generator.
- jhanschoo 11y ago
  Actually, I thought that the main concept of a logo that, when printed on a cylinder, had its white line seem to change its shape depending on horizontal angle, was pretty cool. But it was terrible to have to slog through all the other stuff.
LarryMade2 11y ago
This is what you get when you have a bunch of scientists and engineers looking for jobs in other markets.
- Avalaxy 11y ago
  Are you implying this is science? Because I don't see it being backed by any science.
  - LarryMade2 11y ago
    Look at pages 21, 26, 27, I think they pulled in a scientist to help with those... I'm not saying its all science, but part of the BS is trying to be science-y.
    - duskwuff 11y ago
      Nah. None of that is science; it just has a few sciencey-sounding words in it. My guess would be they were trying to come up with a post-hoc "scientific basis" for their branding decisions? The last page is particularly awful. Not only does it contain a glaring scientific error ("1 light year = 671 million miles per hour"), but it's completely meaningless from a branding perspective. I mean, what does "dimensionalize exponentially" even mean?
- kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
  I think it's just English lit majors who are also BBT fans.
chishaku 11y ago
Even after reading all the comments, I still wasn't ready for that.
ErikAugust 11y ago
Peter Arnell of the Arnell Group: http://gawker.com/244608/new-yorks-worst-bosses-peter-arnell http://gawker.com/244608/new-yorks-worst-bosses-peter-arnell
jacobolus 11y ago
I still suspect that was a hoax or some kind of guerrilla marketing thing. The source was a reddit comment, and as far as I know nobody ever confirmed the PDF’s legitimacy. https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/7w0i2/pepsi_logo_a_response/c07k9l7 https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/7w0i2/pepsi_logo_a_r... Still pretty amusing though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law in action.
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  The .PDF metadata says it's from 2008, produced on a Mac running what was then a fairly high-end package (Acrobat Distiller from the InDesign CS3 suite.) Assuming nobody went to the trouble of adding bogus metadata, it's easy to believe that it really came from an ad agency.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Genius. I haven't laughed this hard in ages.
wallacoloo 11y ago
The tagline on the following page, "dimensionalize exponentially" is just about my favorite phrase of all time.
kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
So the new Pepsi logo apparently came back from the future. Why wasn't it in the movie then?
stuart78 11y ago
My favorite part is when they align the golden ratio to get the white curve "just right"... and then just do a bunch of other random shit w/ the stripe. SCIENCE!
idle_zealot 11y ago
Is this a joke, or just groupthink at its finest?
daltonlp 11y ago
A great satire of these: https://medium.com/@localweb/forward-slash-the-story-of-how-massimo-guzm%C3%A1n-turned-our-simple-logo-into-a-brand-of-possibility-e32817bda1d3 https://medium.com/@localweb/forward-slash-the-story-of-how-... Worth reading for the "Tri-Venn Diabrand"
manigandham 11y ago
Peter Arnell is known for this, just search his name on google and you'll get lots of colorful articles. The Arnell Group was also behind the Tropicana redesign disaster [1]. Lately, it seems he's been brought aboard by BlackBerry and it's interesting how their instagram page shows the slow change from normal looking ads to just weird abstract black and white crap. [2] 1. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-blow-to-arnell-tropicana-drops-package-redesign/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-blow-to-arnell-tropicana-drop... 2. https://www.instagram.com/blackberry/ https://www.instagram.com/blackberry/

by nilkn 11y ago

davidw 11y ago

Wow, that is epic. I'm not sure what the hell to make of it, but it kind of reads like one of those net.kook manifestos about how to create a perpetual motion machine or something like that. But more polished.

randycupertino 11y ago
It reminds me of something food startup Hampton Creek did when VCs and reporters came to visit- they would have their scientists fire up dry ice machines and do fake "cool looking experiments" for no purpose other than to look impressive: > When investors, clients, or media visited the company, some scientists would be asked to run experiments on cool-looking machines or use liquid nitrogen to dramatic effect — even if it had nothing to do with their work, a former employee says. > It was all to create an appearance of a hardworking lab, even though it distracted from the actual research that needed to be done, former employees said. http://www.businessinsider.com/hampton-creek-ceo-complaints-2015-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/hampton-creek-ceo-complaints-...
- J-dawg 11y ago
  Ugh, that article is so sad. I really wanted to believe the hype about Hampton Creek. It seemed like they were doing something truly revolutionary with the potential to drastically reduce human consumption of eggs. (This can only be a good thing for anyone with a concern for animal welfare.) The article suggests their core product is just mayonnaise made with an already-commonplace vegan food additive. They outsourced the development of it, and don't even understand the science of how it works. Is there a new generation of entrepreneurs who have realised their path to riches is to found a PR machine masquerading as a tech company?
  - manigandham 11y ago
    > Is there a new generation of entrepreneurs who have realised their path to riches is to found a PR machine masquerading as a tech company? ...Yes. I wouldnt call it "new" or a "generation" but rather there are always those who can get by with hype and no substance. Nothing new but the amount of people doing it goes through boom and bust cycles like everything else.

sciguy77 11y ago

This can't be real... right? God the advertising industry is so much worse than I thought.

samstave 11y ago
Seriously... is this a real design document?
- sciguy77 11y ago
  I did a quick google and it appears so. :/
  - ryan-allen 11y ago
    I think you'll find that the NeXT logo was designed in a similar fashion, and that many high end brands get this kind of input into their logos and branding. Call it snake oil? Probably, but at least a multi billion dollar brand can answer the question "Why does the swirl look like that?". And only $1 million? That was _cheap_!
    - samstave 11y ago
      Just give me the multi-million dollar logo contract so I may give you the snake-oil design document which justifies my multi-million dollar fee for the snake-oil design document!
zanny 11y ago
I guess its hard to deal with that, at the end of the day, you are just trying to exploit subconscious survival instincts to usurp the rational mind to get people buy things they do not want to buy.
timdeneau 11y ago
It must be satire… but even the chance that it’s real is disturbing.
11y ago

waterlesscloud 11y ago

Wow. I'd loved to have seen this presentation, and in particular a recording of the Pepsi exec's faces as they decide it's safer to go with the consensus of the group rather than to speak up.

ceejayoz 11y ago
This is basically the modern version of The Emperor's New Clothes.

bduerst 11y ago

Hah, that's pretty mild compared to some of the things I've seen come back from creative agencies. Sometimes the agencies throw these dud concepts in there to push you to select one of the better concepts they spent more time on. Which makes you wonder what the other concepts were that didn't make it for the new Uber icon.

username223 11y ago
It's past time to stop calling them "creative agencies." They're "advertisers," "hucksters," or "paid liars," and asking us to call them "creative" was pretty creative.
- bduerst 11y ago
  Even if I had said "Hucksters" then you would have most likely thought of something other than a creative agency. I could probably shave with the amount of edge you've got there.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  To be honest, lying on that level advertisers do requires quite a lot of creativity sometimes. So does placating conscience.

vidanay 11y ago

That made my brain hurt.

jrochkind1 11y ago

Oh man, I've never seen that before. I think the folks at that agency were DEFINITELY high when they came up with that report. bduerst says it's typical. Are marketting professionals all high?

shermablanca 11y ago
Except that it wasn't an agency at all. Kalanick headed the redesign himself, despite admitting that he didn't even know what kearning was when he started. From wired: >>> Most CEOs hire experts—branding agencies that specialize in translating corporate values into fonts and colors—or tap an in-house team. Not Kalanick. For the past three years, he’s worked alongside Uber design director Shalin Amin and a dozen or so others, hammering out ideas from a stuffy space they call the War Room. Along the way, he studied up on concepts ranging from kerning to color palettes. “I didn’t know any of this stuff,” says Kalanick. “I just knew it was important, and so I wanted it to be good.” http://www.wired.com/2016/02/the-inside-story-behind-ubers-colorful-redesign/ http://www.wired.com/2016/02/the-inside-story-behind-ubers-c...
- outside1234 11y ago
  tl;dr Kalanick jumps the shark.
- kzhahou 11y ago
  Self-jumping shark
- username223 11y ago
  > “I didn’t know any of this stuff,” says Kalanick. “I just knew it was important, and so I wanted it to be good.” Translation: "I don't know anything about this, but I believe it is important, so I want it to be done right... and I somehow think I am the person to do that." This is why we all repair our own cars using hammers and pliers.
- jrochkind1 11y ago
  I was referring the pepsi one in the comment I was replying to!

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

archimedespi 11y ago

It's like corporate timecube :) But in all seriousness, how do people even get away with shit like this?

TeMPOraL 11y ago
This is absolutely a higher level of nonsense, but I've seen quite a lot of bullshit people are getting away with in web / social marketing. Basically, nobody in a "creative" agency has any fucking clue how statistics work, so they fudge some numbers and invent interpretations. Customers don't have a clue either, but they're compelled to believe because they spent money on it, and since actual sales data are hard to correlate with particular actions, the agency can extract money from their client as long as the client isn't doing too badly. It reminds me of an article posted here a month ago[0]. Some juicy quotes: [1]. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10872359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10872359 [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10873226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10873226
- mercer 11y ago
  Similarly, I have rarely met an SEO or social media expert who wasn't full of shit, and I have to deal with these people on a regular basis. I've read reports with analyses that were blatantly wrong from a statistic or technical perspective, I've had discussions about the value of 'meta keywords' and whatnot where google itself refuted their arguments. And the most 'effective' experts I found were only so because they'd do all sorts of shady things like set up blogs for link juice. On the other hand, I have met plenty of people with deep knowledge of SEO and social media, but very few of them called themselves primarily experts in this area. Usually they'd be web developers/designers, or small creative studios, or just have some unsexy job description working for a big company.

Elepsis 11y ago

I don't frequently wish the loss of a job upon other people, but I dearly hope everyone involved in producing that document was fired for it, because there is not an iota of substance in those pages.

duskwuff 11y ago
One iota, possibly. The "color theory" section on page 25 is actually halfway reasonable. (I like to imagine the employee working on that part was rolling their eyes wildly at the insanity going on around them.)
- stordoff 11y ago
  I was half-expecting to find something along the lines of "Ignore this /\ (also this \/)" somewhere on that page, as it's the only thing I saw in the whole document that didn't look like it fell out of some broken Markov chain generator.
jhanschoo 11y ago
Actually, I thought that the main concept of a logo that, when printed on a cylinder, had its white line seem to change its shape depending on horizontal angle, was pretty cool. But it was terrible to have to slog through all the other stuff.

LarryMade2 11y ago

This is what you get when you have a bunch of scientists and engineers looking for jobs in other markets.

Avalaxy 11y ago
Are you implying this is science? Because I don't see it being backed by any science.
- LarryMade2 11y ago
  Look at pages 21, 26, 27, I think they pulled in a scientist to help with those... I'm not saying its all science, but part of the BS is trying to be science-y.
  - duskwuff 11y ago
    Nah. None of that is science; it just has a few sciencey-sounding words in it. My guess would be they were trying to come up with a post-hoc "scientific basis" for their branding decisions? The last page is particularly awful. Not only does it contain a glaring scientific error ("1 light year = 671 million miles per hour"), but it's completely meaningless from a branding perspective. I mean, what does "dimensionalize exponentially" even mean?
kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
I think it's just English lit majors who are also BBT fans.

chishaku 11y ago

Even after reading all the comments, I still wasn't ready for that.

ErikAugust 11y ago

Peter Arnell of the Arnell Group: http://gawker.com/244608/new-yorks-worst-bosses-peter-arnell http://gawker.com/244608/new-yorks-worst-bosses-peter-arnell

jacobolus 11y ago

I still suspect that was a hoax or some kind of guerrilla marketing thing. The source was a reddit comment, and as far as I know nobody ever confirmed the PDF’s legitimacy. https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/7w0i2/pepsi_logo_a_response/c07k9l7 https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/7w0i2/pepsi_logo_a_r... Still pretty amusing though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law in action.

CamperBob2 11y ago
The .PDF metadata says it's from 2008, produced on a Mac running what was then a fairly high-end package (Acrobat Distiller from the InDesign CS3 suite.) Assuming nobody went to the trouble of adding bogus metadata, it's easy to believe that it really came from an ad agency.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

Genius. I haven't laughed this hard in ages.

wallacoloo 11y ago

The tagline on the following page, "dimensionalize exponentially" is just about my favorite phrase of all time.

kevin_thibedeau 11y ago

So the new Pepsi logo apparently came back from the future. Why wasn't it in the movie then?

stuart78 11y ago

My favorite part is when they align the golden ratio to get the white curve "just right"... and then just do a bunch of other random shit w/ the stripe. SCIENCE!

idle_zealot 11y ago

Is this a joke, or just groupthink at its finest?

daltonlp 11y ago

A great satire of these: https://medium.com/@localweb/forward-slash-the-story-of-how-massimo-guzm%C3%A1n-turned-our-simple-logo-into-a-brand-of-possibility-e32817bda1d3 https://medium.com/@localweb/forward-slash-the-story-of-how-... Worth reading for the "Tri-Venn Diabrand"

manigandham 11y ago

Peter Arnell is known for this, just search his name on google and you'll get lots of colorful articles. The Arnell Group was also behind the Tropicana redesign disaster [1]. Lately, it seems he's been brought aboard by BlackBerry and it's interesting how their instagram page shows the slow change from normal looking ads to just weird abstract black and white crap. [2] 1. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-blow-to-arnell-tropicana-drops-package-redesign/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-blow-to-arnell-tropicana-drop... 2. https://www.instagram.com/blackberry/ https://www.instagram.com/blackberry/